Former Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald announced Thursday that he reached a settlement with the school in his wrongful termination lawsuit, stemming from his dismissal amid allegations of hazing in the football program.
AP/Oct. 31, 2021
Former Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald announced Thursday that he reached a settlement with the school in his wrongful termination lawsuit, stemming from his dismissal amid allegations of hazing in the football program.
In the summer of 2023, Northwestern released an investigation into hazing within the program and suspended Fitzgerald for two weeks during the offseason. Following public backlash and The Daily Northwestern’s reporting on alleged incidents, university president Michael Schill fired Fitzgerald three days later for his failure to know and prevent the hazing. Fitzgerald sued that October seeking $130 million, saying the two sides had agreed on the suspension and maintaining that he didn’t know about the incidents.
“For the past two years, I have engaged in a process of extensive fact and expert discovery, which showed what I have known and said all along — that I had no knowledge of hazing ever occurring in the Northwestern football program, and that I never directed or encouraged hazing in any way,” Fitzgerald said in a statement Thursday through his lawyers. “Through discovery, I learned that some hazing did occur in the football program at Northwestern.
“I am extremely disappointed that members of the team engaged in this behavior and that no one reported it to me, so that I could have alerted Northwestern’s Athletic Department and administrators, stopped the inappropriate behavior, and taken every necessary step to protect Northwestern’s student athletes.”
When reached by The Athletic on Thursday, Fitzgerald declined to comment further.
Terms of the settlement were not disclosed. In May, the school settled 34 outstanding lawsuits with athletes over the hazing allegations.
Northwestern said in a statement that its top priority is “the health and safety” of its community, including student-athletes.
“While the litigation brought to light highly inappropriate conduct in the football program and the harm it caused, the evidence uncovered during extensive discovery did not establish that any player reported hazing to Coach Fitzgerald or that Coach Fitzgerald condoned or directed any hazing,” the university said in a statement about the Fitzgerald settlement. “Moreover, when presented with the details of the conduct, he was incredibly upset and saddened by the negative impact this conduct had on players within the program.”
Fitzgerald, 50, went 110-101 in 17 years as Northwestern’s coach, including five AP Top 25 finishes, three 10-win seasons and a top-10 finish in the COVID-19-altered 2020 season. Two years later, Fitzgerald went 1-11 in what would turn out to be his final season.
Fitzgerald said the “rush to judgment in the media” in July 2023 caused “reputational harm” and stress for him, his wife and three sons.
“Though I maintain Northwestern had no legal basis to terminate my employment for cause under the terms of my Employment Agreement, in the interest of resolving this matter and, in particular, to relieve my family from the stress of ongoing litigation, Northwestern and I have agreed to a settlement, and I am satisfied with the terms of the settlement,” he said in the statement.
Fitzgerald’s agent, Bryan Harlan, said in a statement that Fitzgerald is eager to return to coaching. Fitzgerald’s son, Ryan, is a quarterback at Iowa, and the elder Fitzgerald had been around the Hawkeyes in recent years.
“I am proud to say that I ran a world-class football program at Northwestern,” Fitzgerald’s statement continued. “I made every reasonable effort to prevent student misconduct, including any hazing misconduct. I continue to love and have the utmost respect for Northwestern as an institution. I love Northwestern’s student-athletes, its fans, and the people that I worked with in my 25-plus years at Northwestern.”
— The Athletic‘s Scott Dochterman contributed reporting.
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